ojala-signell

Raili Ojala-Signell was born in Säynätsalo, Finland, grew up in Kinkomaa near Jyväskylä, spent a year as an exchange student in the United States in 1967-68, and studied social work in Tampere. She is retired and lives in Järvenpää. She worked for over 30 years as a sign language interpreter, information officer and advocate for the Finnish Association of the Deaf and the World Federation of the Deaf, as well as acting as a guidance counsellor in a deaf school and as an interpreter trainer. She has worked actively in many organisations and has been one of the founders, for instance, of the following organisations: The Finnish Association of Sign Language Interpreters SVT, The Finnish Association of the Hearing Children of Deaf Parents, The European Forum of Sign Language Interpreters and the World Association of Sign Language Interpreters. Some of the stories of this book in Finnish have already been published in magazines and anthologies. She has also translated a novel by Raija Nieminen, Voyage to the Island, Gallaudet University Press 1989, into English.